Why telling the truth could save your life: Most of us would rather lie to avoid awkwardness (even in high-risk situations)

Speak up: Politeness could result in disastrous consequences, like a doctor giving the wrong medicine if a nurse has not flagged up an error

Many of us would rather tell a white lie than the brutal truth to avoid an awkward social situation.

Instead of admitting a friend’s new hair-do is hideous, we may choose to say ‘it’s unique’ or ‘just you’.

But a study has revealed that being too polite can have disastrous consequences in high-stakes situations.

It could result in a doctor not
administering the correct treatment if a nurse has not flagged up a
potential error, a pilot crashing because a colleague has not pointed
out a mistake, or staff ignoring strange occurrences in the workplace to
avoid embarrassing colleagues or their boss, resulting in fraud.

An
article in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science
explains that we resort to ‘politeness strategies’ when we have to share
information that suggests someone has made a bad choice.

One of the authors, Jean-Francois Bonnefon of the University of Toulouse, said: ‘It takes more of our cognitive resources to process these kinds of polite statements as it takes more brain power to consider the possibility that people are being polite.

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‘This harder thinking leaves us in a greater state of uncertainty about what is really meant, becoming dangerous in high-stakes situations.’

Politeness can also have serious consequences within corporate culture as people don’t want to embarrass their bosses or their co-workers, so they hesitate to point out when something looks amiss, even when potential fraud or misconduct might be involved.

Corporate culture: People don't want to embarrass their bosses so they don't point out when something looks wrong

Dr Bonnefon said: 'One option is to encourage people to be more assertive in high-stakes situations. Some companies, including airlines, have even instituted assertiveness training programs, but it’s not yet clear whether these programs really work.

'Another option is to try to make the interpretation of polite statements easier for people.

'Say that there is a tone, a prosodic feature which typically signals that politeness is at work. If we can identify this tone, we could retrain pilots or other professionals to react intuitively to that tone in order to treat it as a warning signal.'

Although Dr Bonnefon adds: 'The goal of this research is not to encourage or license general impoliteness - politeness is obviously a very positive behaviour in most cases.'